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Resolution: Ignore food scolds

By J. Justin Wilson

Posted:
01/13/2013 01:00:00 AM MST

Everyone wants to be a better version of themselves in the New Year. Roughly half of all Americans will make New Year's resolutions and set goals for the next 12 months. Weight loss and healthy lifestyle goals top the list, but while we make these personal commitments to slim down, activists want to add a side of obese regulations to breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Unfortunately, their focus on regulating soda sizes and sugar content misses the bigger problem. We gain weight when the number of calories we eat exceeds the number of calories burned through physical activity. According to studies in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, people have become less active worldwide, meaning we're burning fewer calories. Advances in technology, ranging from automatic washing machines to automobiles, have led many of us to a largely sedentary lifestyle. If inactivity decreased by just 25 percent, it could save 1.3 million lives per year.

And every little bit helps. Researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia found that by walking a dog for 20 minutes a day, five days a week, the average participant studied lost 14 pounds over the course of a year. In other words, you don't have to make that huge, unattainable, and quickly abandoned resolution to hit the gym for three hours a day to get in better shape.

Despite this research, the food scolds have other plans. In their never-ending quest to "solve" our problems, politicians have once again missed the mark. Instead of encouraging us to be more active, they've become hyper-focused on only one part of the equation: the food we eat. The most notorious among them may be New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who instituted a ban on soft drinks larger than 16 ounces.

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He's not alone. Several cities have proposed soda taxes and other restrictions to manipulate consumer choice. Washington's outgoing governor proposed bringing back soda and candy taxes that voters struck down only two years ago. Some activists even proposed federal taxes on soda as a way to avert the "fiscal cliff."

Others are pushing the theory that food is addictive and that people cannot control themselves. For them, slogans like "You can't have just one!" aren't a compliment to the food, but rather, a cry for help. But science doesn't back that up. Researchers from Cambridge University have used brain imaging studies and concluded that "criteria for substance dependence translate poorly to food-related behaviours."

When politicians and activists restrict or demonize certain foods for contributing to obesity, they think they're making it easier for us to keep our New Year's resolutions to get healthy. Most Americans recognize that achieving these goals is about taking personal responsibility. But food activists seem to think that a little tax here, a warning label there, and a few banned appetizers will make us resemble swimsuit models by summer.

But the research demonstrates that diet "nudges" can have the exact opposite effect: researchers from the New Zealand universities of Auckland and Otago report that although people may consume less of a taxed food or beverage, they will just look for a cheaper alternative, often containing the same number of calories, or more.

A far better alternative would be to incentivize exercise and increased physical activity. In Brazil, the government intends to build health centers in thousands of cities to help residents become more active. And in the U.S., some entrepreneurs have found another incentive to help people get to the gym -- cash. They developed a smartphone app that makes you accountable for working out on your personal schedule by having you "check-in" at the gym or track your running distance. If you miss your scheduled workout, the app deducts a few dollars from your account. That money is split between the people who make it to the gym. The app's creators, Harvard-trained behavioral economists, say that users are hitting their goals at a rate of 80 to 90 percent.

When bureaucrats say Americans can't make the right choices on their own, they're telling us that obesity is the "food's fault," not ours. Nothing could be more defeatist or insulting. Resolve to make good decisions for yourself in 2013 -- and to reject political campaigns aimed at eliminating your personal freedom.

J. Justin Wilson is the Senior Research Analyst at the Center for Consumer Freedom, a nonprofit coalition supported by restaurants, food companies and consumers.

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